🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 23/09/2026Life-long Latter-day Saints are more White, more college educated, and more Republican than converts. But both are equally conservative. That's an interesting observation. I would guess that converts are far more likely to be immigrants. I wonder how that factors into each of these trends. 040
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 23/09/2026I am fascinated by how regionally concentrated LDS Mormonism remains. Over half of US Latter-day Saints live in the Mountain region of Utah and neighboring states. Nearly a third live in Utah alone. And Mountain Mormons are generally more devout than those living in "the mission field." 160
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 23/09/2026Latter-day Saints remain among the most heteropatriarchal of major US religious groups. This despite marked shifts in the past decade. Equal rights for women and queer people remain sticking points that drive a lot of LDS alignment with Republican politics. 170
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 23/09/2026Interestingly, while LDS Republicans are more socially liberal on matters of immigration and racial and religious diversity than non-LDS Republicans, they are more conservative on abortion and acceptance of homosexuality. These things might be more connected than one might suppose. 150
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 23/09/2026Current Latter-day Saints remain highly conservative and politically Republican. Notable, however, is that where this is least apparent is on matters of immigration and multiculturalism. Given the current administration's loud and violent anti-immigration stance, this is striking. 180
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 23/09/2026The increase in racial and ethnic diversity among Latter-day Saints is quite interesting. For some time now, the LDS church has been growing faster abroad than in the US. The increase in immigrant membership seems a logical reflection of that trend. This raises several political questions. 170
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 23/09/2026The retention downside is well documented and general to US Christianity at large. This is probably the least surprising observation of the study. While 54% retention is among the best of Christian groups, it also represents a major caveat on official LDS-reported membership numbers. 180
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 16/09/2026Truly, FAIR's half-baked responses were far more damaging to my LDS faith than anything in the CES Letter. 0101
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 16/09/2026Also amused that the weaponized pedantry FAIR and other LDS apologists love to employ—especially against the CES letter—is called a reverse Gish gallop. 180
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 16/09/2026Listen, I'm no CES Letter fandog, but calling it a Gish gallop to dismiss it out of hand is just lazy. It's a print document. A Gish gallop is a spoken debate tactic that relies on the constraint of time that simply does not apply when you have all the time and space in the world for your response. 3180
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 24/08/2026Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_.... 190
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 19/08/2026Same vibe as the #LDS church suing #Mormon Stories Podcast over alleged brand confusion. 2100
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 19/08/2026Early Mormonism is just 19th-century American conspirituality. 080
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 18/08/2026Words can never describe how obsessed I am with understanding this transformation. 040
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 04/08/2026Anyway, I think about this all the time, but few people seem to share my enthusiasm for the idea. Mostly because they don't play Call of Cthulhu or they don't care about Mormon history. Mostly commonly, both. But the idea refuses to die and eventually, I'm going to do something with it. 040
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 04/08/2026Call of Cthulhu is a natural fit for a variety of reasons. First, it's already set in alternative fictional history that's very grounded on factual history. One of the things I love about the game is that its books are often so packed with interesting historical details to situate the setting. 150
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 30/07/2026I had way too much fun helping prepare the activity for the #Sunstone closing banquet this year. Hope you like a good cryptography puzzle. 170
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 25/07/2026These #Mormon merit badges we have at #Sunstone this year are simply incredible! 2281
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 18/07/2026Jay's Journal is not alone in setting the stage for the Satanic Panic. Satanism was having a bit of a cultural moment already in the media. But it definitely primed readers toward Satanic influences on suburban youth and did so through a very Mormon lens. 150
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 18/07/2026It's nearly time again for the best part of #Sunstone each year—the #Mormon trivia contest at the Gilgal Sculpture Garden! Test your knowledge of Mormon history, books, movies, celebrities, and more! Incredible nerdy prizes for the winners; laughs and cool refreshment for all. Don't miss it! 061
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 17/07/2026Just reflecting again on how folks would talk about Rubio as some kind of moderate when this is who he's been the whole time, only now he finally feels comfortable enough to remove the mask. 160
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 16/07/2026Here's another study that is demonstrative of the issue: doi.org/10.1080/1650... Note the issue that is highlighted by this paper regarding why the controversy around EMDR is hard to resolve in the literature. Namely, the lack of well-controlled studies and rampant research allegiance bias. 130
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 16/07/2026Notable quotes: "The current study did not provide support for the notion that psychotherapies with eye movements are more effective in treating PTSD than those without eye movements" (p. 1585). This is a finding consistently reported in the literature going back to the 1990s. 130
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 16/07/2026The Restoration is having a great apostasy problem. 270
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 16/07/2026Even all the way zoomed in, it's still hard to decipher. Especially compared to the lines going out from the same section on the left. 120
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 16/07/2026Those are some very tiny lines entering the blue section on the right. I know the LDS segment is small to begin with, but for such a missionary-focused group that's quite the oof. 2150
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 09/07/2026EVERY STATE has laws that protect good faith reporters from legal liability. Not a single state PROHIBITS clergy from reporting opting to waive clergy-penitent privilege to report discovered abuse. Don't let the apologists deceive you. 091
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 09/07/2026Setting aside excuses regarding the legal duty to report, if you're a Christian church and do not preach that you have a MORAL duty to report, you absolutely do not understand the words of the man you profess to worship. 390
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 07/07/2026Just tell me these Sunstone canvas totes aren't the cutest darn Mormony thing you've seen. 280
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 05/07/2026This isn't hard! And it's common when the adapted work is another author's work of fiction. It should be no different when the adapted work is another author's work of nonfiction. Historiography is as much of a craft as writing a literary novel. 040
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 01/07/2026If you're interested in the current debates over Joseph Smith's polygamy, Jeremy Hoop, Michelle Stone, and Whitney Horning have sessions on both Friday and Saturday presenting the truther perspective. We have organized two more sessions challenging the truther perspective. This is one of them: 020
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 01/07/2026Come to the Sunstone Symposium this year, July 30–Aug 1, in the A. Ray Olpin Student Union at the University of Utah. We have a ton of fun sessions planned this year and a few surprises. See the full agenda and register here: sunstone.zohobackstage.com/SunstoneSymp... 151
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 24/06/2026Very excited to meet and learn from @sarahmccammon.bsky.social this year at Sunstone. I've always loved her work as a journalist and her book on Exvangelicals is fantastically written. Thrilled that she is the keynote this year. Register for Sunstone at: sunstone.org/slc2026/ 082
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 24/06/2026Even BYU scholars have to acknowledge that Paul was not an apostle in the way modern Latter-day Saints conceive of the office. That raises serious questions about why his words are considered especially authoritative. Anymore than your neighbor who claims to have seen Jesus in a dream. 140
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 18/06/2026I also find data like this example to be underwhelming. First, the error is massive so there probably isn't a statistically significant difference between these two figures. Second, it's not an election year, so lower enthusiasm is to be expected. Third, the question implies voting for a 3rd term. 140
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 18/06/2026And this data tracks with basically every other poll on politics by religion in America. Latter-day Saints as a group skew very conservative, second only to white Evangelicals. Younger members are a little less conservative, which is also true in virtually every group. 170
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 18/06/2026Notable to me is not the lack of a gender gap but that, as a whole, Latter-day Saints are generally conservative regardless of age or gender. And that has remained pretty stable over the past ~20 years. 160
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 17/06/2026It also squares why Heavenly Mother was only taught as a private doctrine to Smith's closest confidants. These were all parts of an enlightened cosmology available only those Smith deemed ready to accept it. We know he did this on MANY topics—why not spirit birth? I may disagree with Stapley here. 010
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 17/06/2026Notably also that the way Brigham Young taught about his garden cosmology is very much in line with the "milk before meat" teaching model that we know Joseph Smith was a big fan of, especially in Nauvoo. Especially for anything touching on polygamy. 110
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 17/06/2026In fact, I don't know of any among Smith's inner circle who later challenged the idea of viviparous spirit birth. They all seemed to universally accept the idea and with enthusiasm. That also seems quite significant. And it remained the prevailing model for decades! It remains so for many (most?)! 110
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 16/06/2026I think I like my other birthday shirt even better. 0130
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 15/06/2026New shirt arrived just a little late to wear to the Pride Festival but it's evergreen. 3373
🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙♀️ @tokensandsigns.org · 13/06/2026It requires a profound blindness to irony to breathlessly invoke TikTok brain rot while presenting the argument that Joseph Smith is a legitimate prophet because he got one interpretation sort of right while being wildly wrong on dozens and dozens of others. 1140